If you were that woman, sittingevery Friday in the public library, one week workingthrough the who and how and whyof simple questions whispering from your tutor’s lips,the next week learning price and pay and sale and saveand How much does it cost?--if you were that woman,then you, too,would ask for repetition of bag and back and bank,of leave and leaf and left and live,and you would struggle to produce the English soundsthat held the meanings you still heldinside your head: the dappled murmuring of leavesoutside your childhood home, the treesfull of sweet yellow fruit you could not name in this new life,the lives you left so you could live,and as you moved your lips in all the unfamiliar waysto make the sounds your tutor made, she would nodand you would smile, but you would neverwrite, for you’d not yet know howto form or read those fast, firm letters you watched pouring from her hand,and so you’d have no way to store what you had learnedexcept in memory and hope,alongside memories of why you’d never needed written wordsin your native world, where your mother had taught you all the skillsof planting and harvesting and weaving and singing that you would ever needfor living in a lush, good place,and alongside memoriesof gunfire echoing beyond the trees,of rebels begging for or stealing food,of soldiers from some distant city standing in yourvillage, barking about loyaltyand able-bodied men,and then the memoriesof jungle paths for five long nights,of sharing food and whispered hope with others who had daredto flee,and the memories of the daughter and the son, bothborn and grown high as your eye in the refugee camp on the border.The English words would nestle in amidstall this,get lost, be found again, and you would have to tryto pull them out but leave the rest behind, tryto let the new sounds tell you not only the hard-edged names and placesof this brick and concrete life, but also how to live in it:how to takea city bus, how topay forlight, and you would sit again, again, againin a mauve chair at a round table in the library, amidst the shelves and worldsof words,struggling with your who and how and why,and you would not allow yourselfto figure how much it had costor how much you still had to pay.You would just smile and thank your tutor,and come backnext Friday.------------------------------------To learn more about Jennifer, go to jfreed.weebly.com